#8. The placebo effect
One of the oldest mysteries around. This is the name we gave to the strange phenomenon of our bodies positive reaction to fake medicine. The fact is that when you ingest a headache pill usually it is not the pill that stops the headache, and you would’ve gotten the same result from a sugar lump.
Scientists have a theory that when we take the medicine, our brain assumes that things are going to get better and it is no longer necessary to ring any bells and whistles. However the placebo effect had been observed in cases where hearth conditions had improved and asthma related problems have faded, and even limb injuries have improved after a fake surgery, which contradicts this theory.
As it looks like, our minds are pretty naive and can easily be tricked. In some researches the subjects were being told that a cream would be applied to them that hurts, and while a completely normal ointment is being applied the pain receptors in their brains start firing like that thing really hurts.
This and many other cases have become the basis for the belief that the human mind has the ability to heal and regenerate the body, and do all kinds of other wonders. While this is also unproven, it doesn’t stop me to mentally focus everyday on losing my belly and increasing the size of some of my body parts.
#9. What is dark matter?
Aside from the obvious fact that it is pretty dark, we have no clue what dark matter is. Scientists came to the conclusion that dark matter exist, because without it, nothing in the universe that we observe will be this way. So they have stated that about 27% of all the matter in the universe is dark matter. Ask them what dark matter is, and you will get a hour long explanation which in short mean “we don’t know”.
It is called dark matter, because it doesn’t emit or reflect any light, and we still have no way of detecting or observing it. Some have speculated that dark matter is made up of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (yep, that’s right – WIMP) which theoretically are about a hundred times bigger than a proton. But until we get our hands on that stuff we can’t be certain of anything.
Actually scientists are not sure if dark matter exists at all. They just came up with that name to label something that is needed to make their equations work in representing the observable models in the universe.
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